Reuters delivers financial information from stock exchanges and other markets throughout the world to numerous client site computer systems using an extensive wide area network. The financial information delivered by this network includes financial data concerning instruments such as stocks, bonds, foreign exchange instruments, and commodities which may be traded across the world. Within Reuters network, each financial instrument traded over the network is treated as, a separate entity from the time it is entered onto the network from the financial exchange until it is delivered to the client site computer systems. As trades are carried out on the various financial exchanges, corresponding financial information concerning the financial instrument transactions on the exchanges is delivered to numerous client sites worldwide in real time as updates to each affected instrument.
Approximately 1.5 million financial instruments are updated in real time in the Reuters worldwide network. All financial information should then be available in real time to all client sites worldwide with an interest in the information. Thus, accurate, real-time updates to client sites are important to the real-time display of financial information at the client sites. If the displayed financial information is not current, users of the system may rely upon faulty information in performing financial transactions, resulting in substantial financial losses. Furthermore, the display of stale information by the client sites will reduce the users' confidence in, and therefore use of, the Reuters network.
Further, the types of financial instruments available to users is not fixed. Rather, the number of financial instruments available is constantly growing. However, current systems are designed to service one to few instrument types. By accommodating only a few instrument types, designers have optimized the operation of these closed trading systems. However, as the variety of instrument types increases, these closed systems become obsolete. Also, current systems are designed to be used with specific devices and connections, again limiting their usefulness in a global environment where the predetermined system hardware and software norms may not be available or desired. To this end, interaction between divergent operating systems has been difficult. Further, current trading systems do not readily exchange information with other applications (also referred to as host applications) running on a client site terminal. To this end, the end user is relegated to manually transporting received trading information between applications. However, manually transporting information fails to account for any change in the health (or staleness) of the information. To this end, stale information can otherwise current information as present in a user's end application. For example, a spreadsheet calculating a trader's investment in an instrument may reflect erroneous information when the value of each instrument changes over time and the spreadsheet is unaware of the changes. Accordingly, a need exists to provide a system able to accommodate changing instrument types, operate within different operating systems, and provide information to various other applications running on a client site terminal.